If you’re feeling a bit all over the place, I want to talk about how stress affects each of us differently and why these reactions are coming up. Here’s a map for how stress responses work in the body, why we each have different feelings and responses, and how to begin to process your feelings with some of my favorite tools.
I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of three year olds in my life right now. These sweet, coordinated, hilarious, opinionated little ones blow me away with their personalities, storytelling, and ability to recall exactly what their parents (or potty-mouthed aunties say). But the biggest surprise for me has been just how big the feelings are inside of these small bodies. I don’t mean that as a euphemism for drama or poor behavior, it’s truly that these sweet kids have such big experiences and are working through how to express themselves and process these feelings. For adults and kids of all ages, it can be helpful to hear stories and to know we’re together in this work of being human. Here are nine children’s books to serve as a jumping off points for parents to talk to their little ones about different emotions, what they feel like, and how to process and experience them.
How do you make great decisions in the face of emotions, complexity, and change? Bonnie Foley-Wong is an expert in investing, in decision-making, and in understanding what she calls “the head and the heart.” She left a dream job to start her own venture fund, Pique Ventures, and later got pregnant at age 40 with her first child. I ask her about tapping into intuition in the workplace and how she overcame the idea that entrepreneurship was something ‘other people did.’
Here at Startup Pregnant, we believe in the call for a greater emotional dexterity. We believe that it’s important for each of us to experience our emotions. Not just experience them, but feel them, name them, and work with the entire range of emotions that we’re given. To us, this means that you’re allowed to be your whole self. All of you is welcome here.